Well, the Church did much more than declare Hebrews as part of the New Testament canon. At the Council of Trent, they said this:
Of the New Testament: the four Gospels, according [Page 19] to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; the Acts of the Apostles written by Luke the Evangelist; fourteen epistles of Paul the apostle, (one) to the Romans, two to the Corinthians, (one) to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, to the Colossians, two to the Thessalonians, two to Timothy, (one) to Titus, to Philemon, to the Hebrews; two of Peter the apostle, three of John the apostle, one of the apostle James, one of Jude the apostle, and the Apocalypse of John the apostle. (http://history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct04.html
boatbums,
The council was not settling an issue of authorship. It was merely defining what books as they were commonly understood in that day. That was the issue - how many inspired books were there, not who wrote each book. Thus, according to the traditional understanding St. Paul was called the author - but that wasn’t the issue being defined.
By the way, Luther and many of the “Reformers” denied St. Paul wrote the Letter to the Hebrews.
Does it matter? Does it matter who wrote Hebrews? It has not mattered thus far. What matters is that the Church has declared it to be Canon.
Well, the Church did much more than declare Hebrews as part of the New Testament canon. At the Council of Trent, they said this:
I know what they said; and at the time to the best of their knowledge, they attributed Hebrews to Paul. It is to the credit of the Church that they acknowledge that Pauline authorship is rather farfetched. The Church knows better today. How about you?